belt - smoke

Out skiing today and smelled something burning...popped the engine cover and smoke poured out. After it cleared, started up again and immediately saw smoke from around the alternator, apparently from the belt? Belt was very hot to the touch. Haven't seen this happen before. I waited a minute, started again and eveything appeared to be fine (finished skiing). It didn't appear that the belt was loose/slipping - would it cause any problems if it was too tight? I'd rather not chalk this up to a fluke...

bad bearing most likely. Someone showed me a trick to figure out which bearing. The one that is seizing up occasionally will be much noisier than the rest. Take a long extension bar for a socket set, put one end at each bearing and the other to your ear with the motor running. If you can detect more noise from one of them, you have found the one that is failing. Worked like a charm when the idler pulley was going out on my car.